May 2023 translation news roundup
Our monthly roundup of translation and publishing news, plus updates in literature and arts education you may have missed!
Prizes
Time Shelter, written by Georgi Gospodinov and translated from Bulgarian by Angela Rodel, won the 2023 International Booker Prize(opens in a new tab). It is the first time a title translated from Bulgarian has received the award.
Musharraf Ali Farooqi won the inaugural Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation(opens in a new tab) for his translation of Siddique Alam’s The Kettledrum and Other Stories from Urdu to English.
The Sheikh Zayed Book Award announced its annual recipients(opens in a new tab) this month, including Chokri Al Saadi’s win in the category of Translation and Ali Jaafar Al Allaq’s win in the category of Literature.
World Literature Today named the nine finalists for the 2024 Neustadt Prize for International Literature(opens in a new tab), with nominees hailing from Nigeria, Mauritius, Iran, Germany, Mexico, Chile, and the U.S.
The finalists for this year’s CLMP Firecracker Awards (opens in a new tab)were announced, with three translated titles in the category of Fiction. Winners will be announced at the Firecracker Awards ceremony on June 22.
The Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize(opens in a new tab), an award for book-length literary translations into English from any living European language, released its 2023 shortlist.
News
Columbia University’s Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures is accepting submissions for the Sundial House Literary Translation Award until August 1st. Learn more here(opens in a new tab).
On June 23, Stephen Spender Trust, Queen’s College Translation Exchange, and Mother Tongue Twisters are hosting a free virtual Hindi poetry translation workshop with Mohini Gupta.(opens in a new tab)
Reading List
Read “On the Rooftop,”(opens in a new tab) a story from Xu Zechen’s Beijing Sprawl (tr. from Chinese by Eric Abrahamsen and Jeremy Tiang), in Electric Literature.
Read an excerpt of Dorothee Elmiger’s Out of the Sugar Factory, (opens in a new tab)tr. from German by Megan Ewing, in the Baffler.
Nina Pollari on Pirkko Saisio’s The Red Book of Farewells(opens in a new tab), tr. from Finnish by Mia Spangenberg, for the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Olivia Snaije reviews No Edges: Swahili Stories for the Africa Report(opens in a new tab) and speaks with a number of its contributors, calling the collection “masterfully well-balanced…with equally varied voices and language.”
A Life of Sheer Will: Yasmine El Rashidi on Etel Adnan(opens in a new tab) for the New York Review of Books.
“Measureless Melodies: Focus on Vietnam,”(opens in a new tab) the latest issue of Modern Poetry in Translation, is out now, with selected poems available to read online.
